NOTTINGHAM OPEN POETRY COMPETITION 2009
RESULTS
First Prize: Donkeys by Clive Allen
Second Prize: Uchida From The Choir Stalls by Maitreyabandhu
Third Prize: The Earth’s Arrived by Will Daunt
Merits: Elizabeth Burns, Roger Elkin, Mike Barlow, Lyn Brown, David Swann, Joy Winkler, William Gilson, David Underdown, Jean Calder
Commended: Margaret Eddershaw, Will daunt, Alan Dunnett, Daphne Schiller, Andy Green, Clive Allen
JUDGE’S REPORT by PENELOPE SHUTTLE
I always find it both exacting and an exciting prospect, reading entries for a competition. It is true that the number of entries is quite daunting. But it is exciting because of the infinite possibilities of creative energy that will be found among many of the poems. At any moment the world, via the word, will be renewed by a poem. So it is a kind of magical lucky dip.
Now I’m a collector of quotes by poets on poetry; I’m going to quote two such here, because of their relevance to the range of poems I found in the competition; both qotes explain better than I can what I was looking for in the winning poems. These poems possess what the American poet Donald Revell calls ‘the intimacy of poetry that makes our art such a beautiful recourse from the disgrace and manipulations of public speech, of empty rhetoric. A poem that begins to see and then continues seeing is not deceived, nor is it deceptive. It never strays, neither into habit nor abstraction.’
So, winning poems here were not deceived, deceptive, nor did they stray into habit and abstraction.
However, I need to point out that many other poems entered in the competition did indeed stray into abstraction and habit. They followed very well-trodden paths, and this resulted in poems of low pressure and dullness.
Many of these poets might do well to read more widely and deeply in contemporary poetry, and poetry from the cannon.
My second quote, which I kept in mind as I read, and then compiled my long-long list, then my long-list, and then my shortlist – and then decided on the winners, comes from Franz Wright who says:
“I remember very early having the sense that there is one poet in the world, and sometimes if you’re very lucky and you work very hard, you get to be the poet for a while. The rest of the time, you’re trying to earn your way back to being the poet for a moment. Meanwhile, you love poetry itself.’
I found that to be truly said of the poets named here. They had each found that significant moment when you get to be the poet. And, of course, it is clear from their work, that they all love poetry.
Now to the poems themselves:
FIRST PRIZE: DONKEYS by Clive Allen:
They hang around like blanets or old sofas
someone has abandoned in a field.
Their voices have archaic cadences
and harmonies we have to strain to catch.
They would not thank you for a conversation
about the soul, the twisty, thistly soul
They feel like a box of cardigans left in the sun,
in an Oxfam shop.
Their wistful melancholy is expressed
by standing still. Walking is their trade.
For them it is a planetary treadmill
which, for now, they deign to keep on turning.
They trudge along fringes of the island
repeatedly, from landing-stage to rock-pool,
and pose on postcards garlanded in sleigh-bells
with a look that says, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Shakespearian and Biblical, their faces
stare into the wooly heart of darkness.
They nod their heads like slow machinery,
silently agreeing with themselves.
From the opening colloquial downbeat line of this poem to its final stoic image of the donkeys nodding their heads ‘like slow machinery/silently agreeing with themselves’, this poem compels attention, and is rich in acute observation and insights both into donkeyhood and human experience..
There is a sombre poignance intermingled with wit throughout the poem, which adheres throughout to its overall mood, skilfully keeping within the compass of its material, and I love especially lines like –
‘They feel like a box of cardigans
left out in the sun, in an Oxfam shop.’
There is not a wasted word here, every syllable earns its place.
And it is a great feat to write a poem about donkeys with total avoidance of sentimentality. After reading this poem one looks at donkeys with renewed respect.
SECOND PRIZE: UCHIDA FROM THE CHOIR STALLS, by Maitreyabandu:
Before she plays, a man adjusts the microphones
on their tall strategic stands — one above her stool
where soon she’ll sit in bottle-green transparency,
another high above the strings. And when applause
breaks out, and she strides to take her place,
we wait while she sits at the piano, hands suspended
till the coughing stops. Music filters down the snaking
lengths of flex to a van outside, where a man
sits drinking coffee in front of luminous dials —
streetlights blinking, the pavement’s crush of youth.
And where it takes me, the violas lifting something
that might have once been sad, is to a double garage
that had been my father’s shed, tools suspended
in long Dutch shadows, an atmosphere of industry
and wood-dust. He moves about in his oily coat
and green wool hat, sharpening a chisel, chamfering
an edge, his pockets full of tissues where we’d later
find the keys. He oils a cross-peen hammer and hangs it
in a bag, along with all the other tools from car boot sales
and farms: broken things that once sat quietly in your palm.
There’s a place in Poland, or so I’m told, where all
the men are carpenters and all the houses wood.
Apple trees crowd around their doors, paths lead to pines
and hewn titanic oaks. All the men have wolf-cub eyes
and make pencil calculations on their walls. their speech
is large and deliberate like the writing desks they build;
even their breakfast bowls are teak, and all their spoons
and knives. Leaf-light shines in at their rooms, catching
walnut beds and jugs. At night they hum a Polish tune:
it is long and very sad, though no-one knows the words.
No-one who has seen Uchida play, and, often, conduct from the piano keyboard, ever forgets the experience of her musicianship and physical grace. This poem begins there, and then travels on further, to great effect. Each of the three successive ten line stanzas is beautifully judged. The first sets the scene of the virtuoso and her concert broadcast thus -
‘Music filters down the snaking
lengths of flex to a van outside, where a man
sits drinking coffee in front of luminous dials –‘
and this quote demonstrates this poem’s unrushed pace, its confidence in the natural flowing of the narrative and its elegiac process. The second stanza moves the reader back in time, via the emotions evoked by the music, showing a father in his garage –
‘And where it takes me, the violas lifting something
that might have once been sad, is to a double garage
that had been my father’s shed, tools suspended
in long Dutch shadows…’
Then with moving subtlety the loss of the father is revealed –
‘…his pockets full of tissues where we’d later
find the keys.’
The strong depiction of the father among his tools – ‘broken things that once sat quietly in your palm.’, leads on with great strength into the concluding stanza where perspective widens out from the specifically-personal into geographical distance, to Poland. Now from what has been quotidian, familiar (music, emotions, grief) we are taken to a place having the intensity and strangeness of legend –
‘Apple trees crowd around their doors, paths lead to pines
and hewn titanic oaks. All the men have wolf-cub eyes
and make pencil calculations on their walls..’
The point is made that the father is of the company of these men. Uchida from the Choir Stalls successful inhabits a heart-place, yet keeps to a stringent lyricism in order to create a powerful and haunting poem.
THIRD PRIZE: THE EARTH’S ARRIVED, by Will Daunt:
It came by noon and was angle-poised
over hebe, lilac, slugs and hostas
and garden debris, bric-a-brac and cars.
It came as if pitched from a slow left arm
delivered late, and dispatched, to be chucked
by a twelfth man, low, into evening sun.
It came in pouches which were round as skulls
and preserved the soft and precious stuff
within: by dusk the truck had dumped four more.
It came unforked, as if crude and pure -
all mineral stealth and organic clutter -
to be spread and raked about, in time, like scurf.
It came and claimed a patch of lawn for days
which dried into a month-wide stubble scab
while annuals rose around, suspiciously.
Sharp and sure, this poem edges into the realm of the riddle. Deft, sprightly, nimble, this poem struck me from the first reading. Taking an ordinary everyday subject, this poet slews it round into the unfamiliar and the quirky. I like the way the first lines pitch us (or should I say pitchfork us) headfirst into the poem –
‘It came by noon and was angle-poised
over hebe, lilac, slugs and hostas…’
I loved that ‘angle-poised’!
The poem is confident in its use of form – five three-line stanzas making a caudate sonnet of fifteen lines – and never over-eggs the pudding; we are given just as many metaphorical glimpses of the ways in which the new earth arrives as are needed.
Just look at the lovely third stanza –
‘It came in pouches which were round as skulls
and preserved the soft and precious stuff
within: by dusk the truck had dumped four more.’
The repeats of ‘It came…’ at the opening of each stanza hold. the poem perfectly in place.
Throughout the poem, the earth itself is shown to have a personality of its own – and the concluding stanza, where the garden itself is shown as being suspicious of the new piled-up earth is a splendid conclusion to this essentially down-to-earth piece where a sense of unease is just as present as the ways in which the earth is welcomed.
Earthy, visionary, tactile, mobile, this is a beautiful poem.
*
My congratulations to the winners, the merit prize-winners and the commended. The overall quality of poems entered for this year’s competition was very high.
In the words of Wallace Stevens (my last quote, I promise!)- The purpose of poetry is to make life complete in itself and I feel that I have read poems here that have contributed to my own sense of life’s completion. My thanks to all.
Penelope Shuttle
13-Nov-09
NOTTINGHAM OPEN POETRY COMPETITION 2010
PRIZES: 1st: £300 2nd: £150 3rd: £75
and Merit Prizes of One Year’s subscription to
‘ASSENT’
Adjudicator: To be announced
Closing Date: 7th September 2010
1. The competition is open to anyone aged 16 or over.
2. Poems should be in English, unpublished, not accepted or submitted for publication elsewhere, and must be your original work.
3. Poems should not be entered in any other competition, or have previously been a prizewinner in any other competition.
4. Poems should be no longer than 40 lines.
5. Each poem should be typed on a separate sheet of A4 paper, and must not bear your name or any other form of identification. On a separate sheet of paper list your name, address, titles of poems submitted, and where you heard about this competition. No application form necessary.
6. Entry fee: £3.00 per poem or £10.00 for 4 poems.
7. Any number of poems can be submitted on payment of the appropriate fee. Cheques and postal orders should be made payable to Nottingham Poetry Society. No stamps, foreign currency or Irish P.O’s accepted
8.Winners will be notified by post in October 2010
9. Prizes will be presented at a public adjudication in Nottingham on 28th November 2010. All prizewinning poems will be published in ‘Assent’ and a selection on this website. The decision of the adjudicator is final.
10. Entries should be addressed to: The Competition Secretary, 38 Harrow Road, West Bridgford, Nottingham NG2 7DU
To request further details, please contact us .
The Contributors 2009
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